


borderline

by zetaophiuchi (ryuujitsu)



Category: SKAM (France), SKAM (TV) RPF
Genre: Axel Paninihead Auriant, Grand Romantic Gestures, M/M, Pining, RPF, Social Media, gros losers, maxel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-23
Packaged: 2020-03-08 10:26:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18892750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryuujitsu/pseuds/zetaophiuchi
Summary: It’s been a week of flirtation—with each other, with the danger of discovery. First, the convention, where Maxence couldn’t keep still, couldn't stopwinkingat him, and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. The gift of the matching shirts.Just for the photos, Maxence said, pressing Axel’s at him, crinkling beatifically,come on. As though no one had seen Maxence run to him across the stage, settle happily between his legs, and reach for his hand.Five days later, Maxence appeared, without comment, without warning, on thataufemininvideo:don’t be afraid. Axel upped the ante: a television interview from Lyon, conducted on his hotelbed.Your move, Axel thought, dismounting from the white sheets.In reply, Maxence texted him a screenshot of his TGV ticket purchase. Sunday, Lyon, 4 p.m., Gare de la Part-Dieu.J.F. and me, gonna show us the sights?*Axel misses his train.





	1. gone a little far

**Author's Note:**

> Me, trying to connect the dots of Axel and Maxence's social media posts over the last few days:
> 
> ([Exhibit 1](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/184990427794/hello-gone-a-little-far-gone-a), [Exhibit 2](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/185003531874/from-maxence-danet-fauvel-s-story), [Exhibit 3](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/185014348979/toujour-elu-did-he-literally-travel-to-paris-to#notes), [Exhibit 4](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/185041541314), [Exhibit 5](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/184979528334/i-cried-the-rpf-writes-itself-sorry-not))

G _one a little far_  
_Gone a little far this time for somethin'_  
_How was I to know?  
__How was I to know this high came rushing?_

 _We're on the borderline_  
_Caught between the tides of pain and rapture_  
_Possibly a sign_  
_I'm gonna have the strangest night on Sunday_

—Tame Impala, "[Borderline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpbblMR_jUo)"

 

He stays late after the show, talking to fans. The post-performance high is always a little hard to navigate, a little hard to leave. He floats agreeably along, dragging out the euphoria, surrounded by bright smiles and happy chatter and the faint smell of rain filtering through the theater doors. His fans fill his arms with things: a stuffed toy, pleasantly nubbly, with little black beads for eyes and a crown of soft tawny fur, and several gift bags, sharp-handled and heavy, digging into his palms. He signs papers and cards. He poses; he grins. He comes back to himself slowly, hand over hand, following the hoarse thread of his voice back to the surface.

And so, before he realizes it, Axel’s missed his train.

 

It’s been a week of flirtation—with each other, with the danger of discovery. First, the convention, where Maxence couldn’t keep still, couldn't stop _winking_ at him, and they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. The gift of the matching shirts. _Just for the photos_ , Maxence said, pressing Axel’s at him, crinkling beatifically, _come on._ As though no one had seen Maxence run to him across the stage, settle happily between his legs, and reach for his hand.

Then again, as they milled about under the hot lights, Axel had joked, _sotto voce_ , he could kiss Maxence on the mouth in full view of all of Paris, and the crowd would only scream, _Ah, the bonds of friendship. Ah, fraternité._ But Maxence’s eyes had brightened, and he whispered, _Shall we kiss? They’d scream, all right._ For the sake of preserving the bonds of friendship, Axel kissed his cheek instead. He put on the shirt. His half of one beating rainbow heart.

Five days later, Maxence appeared, without comment, without warning, on that _aufeminin_ video: _don’t be afraid_. Axel upped the ante: a television interview from Lyon, conducted on his hotel _bed_.

Your move, Axel thought, dismounting from the white sheets.

In reply, Maxence texted him a screenshot of his TGV ticket purchase. Sunday, Lyon, 4 p.m., Gare de la Part-Dieu. _J.F. and me, gonna show us the sights?_

 _You, sure,_ Axel answered, after the initial thrill passed through his body, leaving him tingling and delighted. _Joris will have to find his own way._

_—A tragedy._

_—Ah, but I’m in Paris until six on Sunday. The last performance of Une Vie._

_—Cool. Sunday night, then?_

_—Sunday night._

 

Perhaps it’s cowardice. He goes home to have dinner with his mother and Ouba.

His mother has made a timbale with sausages and a green salad. There’s even a platter of cheese and grapes. He exclaims over the spread, and she smiles. _Not, of course, that I was expecting you, chéri, but I had a feeling._

He and Ouba dress for the occasion: matching gray hoodies. Coincidentally, his mother is wearing gray, too, but she declines to be in the photo.

He picks the best shot and sends it to Maxence first, with his apologies, and then, when Maxence doesn’t respond, he posts it on Instagram. _The advantage of missing your train…_

And deletes it. Their universal signal. _Look at me. Look at your phone._ Though perhaps Maxence won’t see the notification, if he’s off gallivanting with J.F.; Axel has seen the pictures, of J.F., basking in the sun on the bank of the Rhône, of Maxence, skipping through the old city.

_—Looks like you’re seeing the sights just fine._

He doesn’t check his phone again until after dinner. Good thing, too; he’d have choked on whatever was in his mouth at Maxence’s response. _Not quite. There’s one particular sight I’d like to see._

_—Ah, yes?_

_—Can you arrange it, M. Auriant?_

He clatters through the rest of the dishes, throwing suds everywhere.

“I thought you were staying the night?” his mother says, trailing him to the door, Ouba in her arms. She looks disappointed, but Axel doesn’t have another minute to lose. He kisses her hastily on the cheeks and shoulders his bag. One last pat on Ouba’s fluffy little head, for luck, and he’s off, sprinting to the métro, to Gare de Lyon, and the night beyond.

 

He regrets it a bit once he’s actually on board. The ticket was expensive, the ticket-seller sour-faced, and he realizes the moment the train pulls out from the station that he’s forgotten his charger at home. With 23 percent battery remaining and a two hour journey ahead, he replays Maxence’s story from earlier in the day: all the scenery blasting by in the video is now awash in night, invisible; he’s being fired at top speed through a sea of darkness. At the other end, Part-Dieu; at the other end, glowing lights and sights, one sight.

He tweets. _Vive l’amour. Vive les rêves_.

_—Where are you staying, anyway?_

Eighteen percent.

_—Vieux Lyon. With some friends of J.F.’s._

Fifteen. His phone buzzes a warning. He types quickly. _And the address?_

Maxence gives it. _Why do you ask?_

Fourteen. Axel puts his phone away.

 

The cobblestones are a tripping hazard under the dim street lights of Old Lyon. He finds his way to the paved portion of Rue Saint Georges, ducks inside Number 10, and rings the bell. Three times, four. He can hear music pounding from an upstairs window. He considers shouting. A bellow from the gut. A cry from the heart.

Just after the sixth ring, the door opens—with a blast of warmth and the smell of pizza and tobacco and incense—and Maxence is looking at him, Maxence clad implausibly in a floral and paisley dressing gown over his jeans and t-shirt, his hair wild at the top of his head like some black thorny crown, an unlit, half-rolled cigarette drooping from between his fingers.

“What?” he says. “No, but—what?”

“Hi,” Axel says, already beginning to grin, gladness spreading through him like sunlight. “I’ve arranged it. As you can see.”

“Arranged—” Maxence nearly drops the cigarette. He gapes, and then he starts to giggle. “Axel, you—I meant a naughty pic, not—not this.”

“Oh,” he says. The glow dims. He tightens his fingers around the strap of his bag and grinds the heel of one sneaker against the stone step. “Well. Is J.F. in there? His friends? It’s a little late to check into my hotel, so—”

He thinks about his bed at home, so nicely made, a spot by the pillow just for Ouba. At the same time, there’s nowhere else he wants to be but here on this stoop, with the night air drifting soft and quiet around him, rustling, very gently, the ruffled hem of Maxence’s bizarre robe.

“Wait, wait,” Maxence says, hands fluttering. He jabs the cigarette into the front pocket of the dressing gown, swings the door open wide. “No, they went out, I stayed behind, I—hey, come in. Come in already.”

 

In the vestibule, one hand on the doorknob, before the front door has even closed, Maxence bends and kisses him. Axel lists to one side, dragged by the weight of his bag. He slings an arm around Maxence’s neck for balance and opens his mouth to the taste of pizza and beer and a little bit of pot.

He sighs. Maxence noses at him and grins. They jostle their way up the stairs, shoulder to shoulder, nudging each other into the narrow plaster walls.

The apartment is decorated in a somewhat extreme style, all velvet divans and mandala tapestries and weird candles: there’s even one shaped like a skull, with a polished pearly gloss. There are empty beer bottles and bits of charred crust all over the counter. Maxence turns the music down and starts to root around in the refrigerator, mumbling something about leftovers, but Axel pulls him away. _Maxe, c'mon._ He walks backward with Maxence draped over him, kissing him with little noises of appreciation, until his calves hit the divan and they both flop down.

“How much longer are we going to play this game?” Maxence says.

“What game?”

“ ‘Vive l’amour,’ _putain_ ,” Maxence quotes at him. “Someone’s going to notice.”

“You don’t like it?” Axel says.

“Don’t like what?”

“Being on the borderline. It’s kind of fun, no?”

Maxence shrugs, one-shouldered. He sits up and reaches for the skull candle and bounces it from palm to palm. “If you don’t care, I don’t either, I guess,” he says. He looks down. “But it’s not just a game to me, not really.”

Maxence’s dressing gown is hanging off one shoulder, pulled open by Axel’s greedy hands. Axel tugs it back up and rearranges it, smoothing out the wrinkles across the arms and chest. He hesitates over the tasseled belt.

“I’m sorry I missed my train,” he says. He looks up to find Maxence gazing at him, eyes lidded, lips parted, and swallows. “I’ll show you a good time tomorrow, I promise. And the day after. However long—however long you’re staying.”

Maxence brushes the backs of his hands, and then he squeezes them, and then he leans down and kisses Axel, one slow soft press against his upper lip.

“It’ll be tomorrow in a few minutes,” he says, low.

“Well, then.” Axel undoes the belt.

 


	2. will I be known and loved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHAT AM I DOING
> 
> There are no exhibits for this installment (except the various tumblr posts documenting the tragic loss of Maxence's hair, RIP). I wrote this because [FLWhite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FLWhite/) is breaking my heart with their sad Maxel fic (read it [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18921682/)).
> 
> Yes, yes, I know Axel is going to be in another movie soon. Shh!

_Starting to sober up_  
_Has it been long enough?_  
_Will I be known and loved?_  
_Little closer, close enough_

 _Will I be so in love?_  
_Gettin’ closer, close enough_  
_R.I.P., here comes the sun_  
_Here comes the sun_

—Tame Impala, "[Borderline](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpbblMR_jUo)"

 

At two a.m., they go for a walk. Rue Saint Georges is night-draped and silent; the street lights seem even dimmer than they were when Axel arrived. In the distance, he hears the noise of passing cars like waves of ocean water lapping across deserted sand, sweeping, sweeping.

Axel inhales. In the aftermath of orgasm he was ready to dance, to leap from the divan and soliloquize with the skull-shaped candle raised high in one palm, every part of him refreshed and tingling, while Maxence lay back across the velvet, languid, and watched him from beneath sleepy eyelids. He feels calmer now, and Maxence seems more energetic, reinvigorated, it appears, by the cooler night air. They re-calibrate and return to center, orbiting each other as they walk. Axel nudges Maxence into a bollard; Maxence elbows him in gentle retaliation; they chuckle.

At the corner, Maxence takes his hand. With quick nervous movements, he interlaces their fingers, unlaces them, laces them again, and squeezes in pulses, until their hands begin to resemble, to Axel, two ventricles of the same heart, sharing the same frenetic heartbeat.

 

Earlier, rearranging himself, rocking across the floor with more of that strange energy building beneath his skin, with a desire to put his hand on one old, runny glass square of the many-paned window, he turned to Maxence and asked, “Where did they go, the others? J.F. and them.”

Maxence answered slowly. His voice was sweet and light, his hair in his eyes; Axel looked at him and adored him.

“A club,” Maxence said. “Some club in the second arrondissement.”

“Le Sucre?”

“Maybe. There was another J.F. wanted to see, on a boat. Loupika.”

“That would have been nice." He imagined the sparkle of string lights on the water, the gentle swaying. "You didn’t want to go?”

“I was out of it,” Maxence said. He stroked his fingers absently up his naked chest and gnawed at a fingernail. “I was—well—maybe I smoked too much, I don’t know.”

He saw it in Maxence’s eyes then, a red-rimmed flicker: _I was waiting for you, I was lonely, I was disappointed, how could you miss your train, after I came all this way?_

He trampled the urge to look down, to turn back to the window and the yellow glow of the street just below. “Shall we join them?”

“No,” Maxence said, blinking the redness away, “God knows where they are now, anyway.”

“Are you sleepy?”

“No,” Maxence said, faint and untrue.

“Come, then.”

 

Now, loping toward Rue des Farges and the Roman baths, Axel grips Maxence’s hand and offers a counterpulse, tapping a drumbeat into the divots between his knuckles. Maxence snickers and stops his squeezing, and Axel wonders again where Eliott stops and Maxence begins; it was Eliott he fell in love with first, after all, and Eliott that he misses sometimes, soft-voiced and smiling. He sees glimpses of Eliott in certain moments, when Maxence laughs, when Maxence chews his lip or crosses the room to reach him with happy bouncing steps: Eliott charging toward his Lucas. When, whether by accident or intention, Maxence calls him Lucas, he answers.

“You know those movies,” Maxence says, “those movies that take place in a single night? Like the Infinite Playlist. Or After Hours. Or Théo and Hugo.”

“Are you suggesting we begin a quest? Right now, here?”

“No, well, no, the night is nearly over, and I’m tired.”

He teases. “You’re tired!”

“A little, just a little.”

“What would we be questing for?” The perfect performance, he thinks, of a perfect song, a perfect love. “Better pizza?” Maxence had fed him a crust before they left the apartment, limp, over-salted, ashy-tasting.

“Hey. If you’d come when it was fresh...”

“Sorry, sorry.”

“Maybe just the sunrise,” Maxence says. “The sunrise over the Alps and the Rhône. I’m sure it’s a nice sight. Something worth a quest, no?”

“Oh, so it’s an arthouse movie, then,” he says. “Lots of long silent shots and single takes. On 35mm film.”

“Of course,” Maxence says. Abruptly, he asks, “Would you ever do another movie?”

“Arthouse?”

“Any kind.”

They swing around in a wide loop and walk back along Quai Fulchiron, where the Saône is itself like a long black strip of film dividing them from the peninsula.

“I don’t want to say no,” Axel says. “Live theater, audience interaction, I prefer that. But I don’t want to close any doors, not right now.” He hesitates. “You know what I want most for both of us is…”

“Yeah,” Maxence says. “It would be nice to see Lucas again.”

When, Axel wants to ask, when was it that you fell in love with me? Was it at the first reading, or the second? Was it that day when I was worse than Léo, and kept flubbing my lines, and I bought you a drink to apologize? Was it when you pressed me against the wall of the foyer, your fingers slippery with paint, and I couldn’t stop the noise I made? Or was it after, long after filming was finished, when one morning you woke up and realized that you missed me—me, not Lucas?

Maxence, was it tonight when you opened the door, or is the moment yet to come? At the edge of the river, he wraps his arms around Maxence’s neck and hangs on, until Maxence gets the idea and laughs and stoops to kiss him.

 

The others have returned by the time they get back to the apartment. The divans are occupied; J.F. has already collapsed in the guest room. In the kitchen, wearing the floral-and-paisley dressing gown and little else, a woman named Brianne is filling a glass of water. Blearily, she nods at them both.

“How was Loupika?” Maxence says.

“A delight,” Brianne says. “And you, where’d you run off to? Feeling better?”

“Just went for a stroll,” Maxence says. “You know Axel, I think? He managed to catch a later train. Is there room for…”

“Anywhere you can find the space to lie down,” she says. She chugs the glass and fills another. “Oh, it’s my pleasure, don’t worry about it. The more the merrier and so on. Sleep well, and nice to meet you in person. I apologize now for whatever I’ll be like in the morning.”

“A makeup artist,” Maxence whispers to him, as Brianne disappears into the corridor. “For House of Gaunt.”

“Is this a House of Gaunt getaway weekend, then?” he says. “Ah, the one who made the plaster cast of your face?”

“No, another.” Maxence frowns as he surveys the bodies sprawled across the living room. “Just friends of J.F.’s. All of them, seemingly. Actually, too many of them, fuck. We may have to sleep on the fucking balcony.”

“As long as it doesn’t rain…I’ve slept in a tub before,” he offers.

“What?”

“With a pillow, it was almost comfortable.”

Maxence grins at him. “I won’t fit in a bathtub. _You_ , on the other hand—”

“Ass.”

They sneak down the corridor, poking each other in the ribs and biting down on their lips to muffle their laughter.

Maxence says, “Well, if you don’t mind J.F….”

But there’s a girl in bed with J.F. who Maxence does not recognize, and Maxence snorts at this, quietly, under his breath.

“So this is what happens when I leave you unsupervised,” he mutters.

“The rug, then,” Axel whispers: it’s a black shaggy mass like the matted pelt of a yeti, and it looks plush enough. He sits gingerly upon it and feels the hardness of the floor pushing up to meet him. Maxence lies down too, arranging himself so beautifully that for a moment Axel is startled: is this a photoshoot? On a balcony, in a bathtub, on the ancient molting shag rug of a bohemian apartment—Maxence could drape himself across a mound of garbage in a dumpster and still appear to be in perfect comfort. Eliott would contort himself, perhaps, and flop awkwardly and giggle about it. He would rest his head on Lucas’ shoulder the way Axel is currently resting his on Maxence’s.

He thinks about being discovered like this in the morning, by J.F., by J.F.’s mystery woman, by Brianne. They could plead drunkenness. They could say nothing at all. Among friends, they could sit in each other's laps while eating breakfast, and no one would venture a damn thing about _fraternité_.

“Do you think this would give us rug burn?” Maxence whispers, wicked, “if we tried anything,” and before Axel can splutter an answer, he kisses the top of Axel’s head and curls around him like a python. “Good night, darling.”

“Good night,” Axel murmurs. It would be nice, he thinks, to fuck Maxence at least one more time before he goes. Not here, but in his hotel room, maybe. After the show. They’ll swap the floral gown for a crisp white minimalist one, emblazoned with the hotel logo. He’ll go as hard as he can, do it viciously, so he can send Maxence back to Paris with the memory of Axel’s teeth on his skin and an ache between his legs and a promise to do it again soon.

“I’m glad you made it tonight,” Maxence whispers, and then they are quiet.

 

He wakes up once, toward dawn, because his arm has fallen asleep, crushed beneath his body. He readjusts it and lies there with static buzzing into his fingertips and J.F.’s bare feet hanging off the bed above him, watching the slow creep of light across Maxence’s sleeping face: the parted mouth, the golden eyelashes, the slight, very slight beginnings of tawny roots in his soot-black hair. He’s going to shave it off soon, Axel knows, all of it; what a shame.

Watching the sunlight on the silk of Maxence’s eyelids, he ruminates on the look of love. He’s seen it sometimes on the faces of his audience, gliding across their eyes in the third and fourth rows, and that’s when he knows he has them, when they gaze at him and forget to breathe. He’s seen the look on the face of Eliott, gazing down at his Lucas, and once more Axel wonders where the line is drawn, or whether there is any line at all.

He resists the desire to brush the hair from Maxence’s cheek and closes his eyes again.

 

Much later, with a full blue sky overhead, they stand on the balcony beside the potted plants and drink café au laits. J.F. and the girl have gone; Brianne is still asleep. The others shuffle about inside the apartment, vague shapes behind the filmy red curtains. They introduced themselves to Axel over croissants: Joséph, Martina, Laure, and two others he’s forgotten. Martina is a stagehand, though not at the Odéon, and she’s getting ready to go to work. Axel must go too; he needs to check in and drop off his bag and begin the process of disappearing, of becoming Baptiste Beaulieu, the medical intern.

“My phone’s dead,” he says. “I’ll have to buy a charger.”

“I’m sure Brianne has a spare somewhere.” Maxence seems distant, a little cold. There’s a thin crackling sandiness to his voice; he hasn’t slept well, Axel can tell, on that shitty rug on the floor. All the more reason to get him into a real bed. He can spend the night at Axel’s hotel, if he wants. Narrow-eyed, Maxence sips his coffee and glares down into the street.

“I have to go,” Axel says, touching his arm. “But tonight? At my hotel? The room number...I’ll text you the room number when I have it. Are you—when are you going back?”

Maxence shrugs. “Don’t know yet.”

“Okay, well…” Before he goes, he reaches up and runs his hand through Maxence’s hair, the tangled dry mess of it, a little farewell all his own, while Maxence blinks down at him, the corner of his mouth beginning to twitch away from sullenness. “Later, then,” he says.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Maxence says. He casts around for a place to set his coffee cup and ends up nestling it in the soil of a low-hanging basket, alongside a fern. Then he takes Axel’s face firmly in his hands and looks at him, searching, and plants a kiss on his mouth with a bright noisy smack. “There,” he says. “Okay. Later.”

 

In the street, the line between the step and the pavement is pitted and uneven. He drags his toe along the seam. A laugh floats down from above. He looks up at Maxence, grinning at him from the balcony, and raises his hand in farewell.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. If you liked it, please [reblog](https://hallo-catfish.tumblr.com/post/185014513334/borderline-zetaophiuchi-ryuujitsu-skam-tv)!


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